Integrating new authors into organised play campaigns has always presented administrators with a problem, no matter the system.  A wise man told me when I was starting out that for every 100 people who tell you they’d like to write an adventure, 10 get around to submitting an outline, two stick with it and hand in a first draft, and of those two, only one will complete the adventure on time.  

In my experience, he was being optimistic. 

This helps explain why campaign staff tend to go with the

I have posted a draft of the CCG here:

docs.google.com/fileview?id=0BxD8pBex94d...

It contains all of the changes with the EXCEPTION of the magic item rarity and table formation rules that are being discussed in the previous blog post and on the forum. When discussing these changes, please use the forums for this community group.

Sean ask me to post the following discussing one of our last sticking points on the CCG:

Greetings...

Aside from the question of how to adopt the Essentials magic item changes, there is another issue that we need to finalize before we can release the new LFR Campaign Guide.  Specifically, we need to decide exactly how adventure tiering is going to work next year.

Here's the part that IS NOT up for discussion: Starting in Q1 2011, most new LFR adventures will be written to span an entire tier of play (Heroic or Paragon).  None of us is super thrilled about this change, but because of the reduced number of adventures per year, we feel like we don't have any choice but to widen the spread of levels.  There will continue to be exceptions (such as special events that might have versions for

Only a short note today. The CCG is just about finished and sometime today or tomorrow it will go to the volunteers for 24 hours before coming to the public. Sometime in the second half of this week (probably Wed), the public review of the CCG will begin. I will post again to the blog and the forums when it is available.

One of the major changes the Globals are currently wrestling with is how we parcel out rewards to your valiant heroes once they conquer yet another adventure. In light of the changes we are beginning to see to magic items with the Essentials line, this becomes even more complicated. This blog discusses work in progress, so please feel free to comment in the forums, as we are definitely listening to your thoughts. Once we make a final decision on these issues, the next version of the CCG with all of our other changes will be available for you to comment on. This process if expected to be finished by the end of October.

Magic Items

As much as the original design philosophy of D&D 4e was to make magic items less important, every gamer knows that they WANT that shiny new tool (that coincidentally

There is a reason that the word DEADlines contains the word dead; because things start to go very badly when you miss you them. Working out a reasonable release schedule is always a problem, but the original goals of the campaign were just not reasonable. Problems that crop up in the lives of volunteers are always going to take precedence over whatever it is they are volunteering for. That coupled with all kinds of structural problems led to a total disaster that is LFR release schedule. We are installing several changes to help fix these issues. We have lowered the number of adventures to a more manageable level (and at the same, looking to increase the quality of the stories), and we have moved out from underneath the umbrella of WOTC enough that they no longer have to read and approve

One of the things that all Organized Play campaign volunteers struggle with is finding the right balance of communication with the player base. Some players want up to the minute responses to their posts at the expense of actually running campaign, while other players want as few updates as possible so they don't have to regularly check a website or search multiple different creation guidelines. It's likely that there is no way to make every player happy, but how much communication is too much? How much is too little? What's the best way to stay in contact? This blog entry describes some of what we are thinking.

Hopefully you have noticed an increased presence of the campaign volunteers on this community site, as well as a greater chance for players to be involved in rules discussions (like

A short post today, Happy Labor Day!

Hearts in Shadow

*** 11th Tarsakh, Year of The Ageless One ***

The sky above Blackfeather Bridge was a featureless gray that morning. Fog hung in the village streets. The view from the tallhouse's upper windows did not reach further than the rooftop of the smithy opposite the street. The clang, clang of the smith's strenuous labour carried much further through the fog. The woman in the window peered down, to where a light broke though the morning mist and marked the entrance of Grobalt's workplace, but al she could see from the smith was a flickering in the light when he moved in front of his fire.

She stepped back from the window and closed the old but heavy curtains, throwing the room back in glum darkness.

She caressed the soft fabric, staring

Player Empowerment and Critical Events

With the removal of Adventure Questions from adventures, a common question is “How will the players affect the storyline?” The Globals have given this a lot of thought, and we have decided to implement a new (or rather an old) method of collecting Critical Events. Starting in 2011, some adventures, such as the Elturgard Story Area adventures that are released two per quarter, will have a few critical events questions listed at the end of the adventure. Those adventures will have events in them that will affect the direction of the plot in the next quarter and we want to let the player base decide on those directions as much as possible. Then for one month following the adventure’s release the Globals will collect those Critical Events from convention